Preparative Biocatalytic Synthesis of α-Ketoglutaramate

Abstract

α-Ketoglutaramate (KGM) is an underexamined metabolite of L-glutamine in the metabolic pathway of glutaminase II of α-ketoglutarate formation. Presumably, KGM may be a biomarker of hepatic encephalopathy and other hyperammonemic diseases. This metabolite is a substrate for the ω-amidase enzyme and is used to determine its activity in the study of the biochemistry of various types of cancer. However, the commercial unavailability of KGM hinders its widespread use. Methods for the preparative synthesis of KGM are known, but they either do not provide the proper yield or proper purity of the target product. In this work, a detailed description of the procedures is given that allows the production of KGM with a purity above 97% and a yield of the target product above 75% using L-amino acid oxidase from C. adamanteus as a catalyst of L-glutamine conversion. KGM can be obtained both in the form of a highly concentrated aqueous solution and in the form of crystals of sodium salt. The developed methods can be used both for scaling up the synthesis of KGM and for creating economical biocatalytic technologies for the production of other highly purified preparations.